Oz minister walks plank for dancing drunk in his smalls

An Oz state government minister was yesterday obliged to resign after it was revealed he'd thrown a few shapes to techno music in "very brief" underwear during a drunken late night party in his in his Parliament House office, the Guardian reports.

Matt Brown apparently strutted his stuff three months ago while he was New South Wales housing minister. Three days ago, he was sworn in as the state's police minister, but his tenure - as brief as his pants, evidently - was terminated by state premier Nathan Rees after reports of the debauch surfaced.

Brown initally assured Rees that "absolutely nothing untoward" had happened at the bash, but the latter told Fairfax Radio Network: "I subsequently put it to former minister Brown late last night that there are too many reports of you in your underwear for me to ignore."

Rees concluded: "He conceded he'd been in his underwear, and that gave me no option but to demand his resignation."

Brown, a former lawyer and university lecturer, had been a minister for nine years. He said of his downfall: "I'm a human being ... I made a mistake, and I'm going to cop the consequences of that mistake." ®